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Topic: Honesty test (Read 4826 times)

How would you feel living in a world where the following would be a day by day observable reality : literal talking snakes, magical trees, gods and godesses, women who gave birth and remained with their hymen intact, spiritual angelic beings with wings, heaven , God sitting on a throne, no vices , having hell as one of your landscapes where the souls of poor bastards are tormented interminably and for eternity?Explain.

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Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.Mahatma Gandhi

How would you feel living in a world where the following would be a day by day observable reality : literal talking snakes, magical trees, gods and godesses, women who gave birth and remained with their hymen intact, spiritual angelic beings with wings, heaven , God sitting on a throne, no vices , having hell as one of your landscapes where the souls of poor bastards are tormented interminably and for eternity?Explain.

Some of those I actually believe...

I guess that you're mixing 30 Steps of st. John's Divine Ladder with 12 steps of dr. Bob's Alcoholics Anonymous.

How would you feel living in a world where the following would be a day by day observable reality : literal talking snakes, magical trees, gods and godesses, women who gave birth and remained with their hymen intact, spiritual angelic beings with wings, heaven , God sitting on a throne, no vices , having hell as one of your landscapes where the souls of poor bastards are tormented interminably and for eternity?Explain.

Honesty test for you. Are you calling for help in understanding your own faith or are you ridiculing what is already too late for one to explain for you.

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Vain existence can never exist, for "unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain." (Psalm 127)

If the faith is unchanged and rock solid, then the gates of Hades never prevailed in the end.

Not too get too weird or anything, but ever since I was a tiny tot, I have had a sense of, or a certainty of, another world, or another reality - (it's difficult to explain) where these things and more are commonplace, are the way things actually work. I've also had the sense that this was "realer" than what is commonly called "the real world."

So I don't have any problem with it.

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"If but ten of us lead a holy life, we shall kindle a fire which shall light up the entire city."

How would you feel living in a world where the following would be a day by day observable reality : literal talking snakes, magical trees, gods and godesses, women who gave birth and remained with their hymen intact, spiritual angelic beings with wings, heaven , God sitting on a throne, no vices , having hell as one of your landscapes where the souls of poor bastards are tormented interminably and for eternity?Explain.

If I lived in a world like that it would seem normal to me I would guess, since I wouldn't know anything different

How would you feel living in a world where the following would be a day by day observable reality : literal talking snakes, magical trees, gods and godesses, women who gave birth and remained with their hymen intact, spiritual angelic beings with wings, heaven , God sitting on a throne, no vices , having hell as one of your landscapes where the souls of poor bastards are tormented interminably and for eternity?Explain.

How would you feel living in a world where the following would be a day by day observable reality : literal talking snakes, magical trees, gods and godesses, women who gave birth and remained with their hymen intact, spiritual angelic beings with wings, heaven , God sitting on a throne, no vices , having hell as one of your landscapes where the souls of poor bastards are tormented interminably and for eternity?Explain.

Some of those I actually believe...

I guess that you're mixing 30 Steps of st. John's Divine Ladder with 12 steps of dr. Bob's Alcoholics Anonymous.

Nah....he's mixing St. John's 30 steps with tequila and peyote--one step at a time while listening to Puff The Magic Dragon .

I do quite like listening to Greek being spoken. I can only pick out a few words here and there, though, and that's only because I'm an etymology geek.

Absolutely agree, it's very melodic and flexible. I often catch myself that I keep reading some passages further even if 99% of the words are totally unknown for me, just for the pleasure of its' sound.

It's a saying from the Tao Te Ching... I take it to mean to know what it means to be aggressive and assertive, but to stay to the way of being passive and accepting what comes and yielding. Or, in other words, don't try to force things too much.

It's a saying from the Tao Te Ching... I take it to mean to know what it means to be aggressive and assertive, but to stay to the way of being passive and accepting what comes and yielding. Or, in other words, don't try to force things too much.

I thought it was more like "remember that while your pals are cool, you should marry a woman", or something like that

It's a saying from the Tao Te Ching... I take it to mean to know what it means to be aggressive and assertive, but to stay to the way of being passive and accepting what comes and yielding. Or, in other words, don't try to force things too much.

I thought it was more like "remember that while your pals are cool, you should marry a woman", or something like that

"I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die [...] These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." -The Lord Jesus Christ

No longer active on OC.net. Please pray for me and forgive any harm I might have caused by my ignorance and malice.

I talk to snakes all the time and they hiss back. I don't quite understand what they're saying, but they do talk. It's all Greek to me.

God is real and its a human conceit that he sits on a throne (that's where deities sit, in our feeble minds), but He's certainly real.

The miracle of the Virgin Birth is just that. A miracle. Which means the laws of science were warped for a short period of time.

The idea of angels having wings is a human conceit and metaphor. Spiritual beings don't need wings on account of the fact that they are spiritual. Duh.

The older I get, the vices I once enjoyed look more and more like the prisons the holy men and women say they are.

In the hereafter, my only landscape would be God Himself, or at least as much of Him as I'm capable of seeing, if I understand things correctly.

Nice answer.

Selam

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"Whether it’s the guillotine, the hangman’s noose, or reciprocal endeavors of militaristic horror, radical evil will never be recompensed with radical punishment. The only answer, the only remedy, and the only truly effective response to radical evil is radical love."+ Gebre Menfes Kidus +http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000984270/Rebel-Song.aspx

In Tolkien's essay, "On Fairy Stories" he says that the Christian Gospels contain "a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind, which embraces all the essence of fairy stories." Tolkien says, "this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation have been raised to the fulfillment of creation. The birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation."

Or to put it another way: Once upon a time there was a mystical tree in the midst of a mystical garden where a great evil was loosed upon the land, and as the centuries passed it rained frogs and humble bushes burned without being consumed upon hidden mountainsides. Once a donkey spoke and once the sun stood still and crazy old men wandered the wastes half starved, half naked telling tales of one who would come to set it all back to rights….and this time it was all true.

With respect to talking animals I've rather wondered if the little she donkey of Balaam who talked birthed a line of donkeys gifted with speech, one of which might have been in the manger at Christ's birth and a descendent of which carried Him into Jerusalem. However in earlier generations one of that line mated with a horse and produced one of the line of mules used by the Judges of the ancient Hebrews…though mules are normally born sterile, one or more of this line was not and bred back into the world of horses establishing a line which also had the gift of speech. In the mid 20th century one of these horses and one of these donkeys were paired again, the Offspring of which went on to star in several motion pictures as "Francis the Talking Mule". He turned out to be the great uncle of Mr. Ed who went on to television fame a horse generation or so later.